Some of my debts are immediately related to this book and some are of a much longer-term character. Starting with the latter, I am grateful to a number of institutions in which I have studied and worked, but two in particular should be singled out – the London School of Economics and Political Science and St Antony’s College, Oxford. Degree courses in Britain have become somewhat narrower and more specialized than they were more than fifty years ago when I was an undergraduate and graduate student at the London School of Economics. Therefore, I still appreciate the fact that in the B.Sc.Econ. at LSE, I was able to study not only politics and economics but also political and economic history, social psychology and sociology and to attend lecture courses that ranged from Michael Oakeshott on the history of political thought and Lionel Robbins on the history of economic thought to Hilde Himmelweit and Bram Oppenheim on theories and concepts in social psychology and Leonard Schapiro on the government and politics of the Soviet Union. As a student I benefited particularly from the encouragement of Jack Hayward, Keith Panter-Brick, Alan Beattie and Leonard Schapiro. The institution to which I am even more indebted is St Antony’s College, Oxford – and Oxford University more generally – for, notwithstanding Visiting Professorships and Fellowships in, and numerous study visits to, other countries, it has been my academic home for more than forty years. St Antony’s, as a graduate college with a special focus on the social sciences and modern history, is distinctive for the strength of its centres of research on particular regions of the world – Russia and Eurasia, Europe, Africa, the Far East, the Middle East, and Latin America, among them. It has been of great benefit to be able to discuss particular countries – and, in the context of this book, particular leaders – with first-rate specialists on the politics and history of those states. Many of them, as my individual acknowledgements will illustrate, have been Fellows of St Antony’s, although friends and colleagues from the wider Oxford academic community and from further afield have also been generous with their time and insights.
In addition to St Antony’s being very much in touch with the real political world, I have benefited from a lot of direct contact with political practitioners, both in Britain and in a number of other countries over the years. Some of these meetings arose from ad hoc consultation by prime ministers, party leaders or foreign secretaries; some from participation in meetings of the World Political Forum and the InterAction Council, which bring together former heads of government and a number of academic specialists; while many flowed from the Visiting Parliamentary Fellowship at St Antony’s. I mention here by name only a few of the participants in public and political life with whom I have had interesting conversations of direct relevance to the subject of this book – leadership, power and influence in high politics. They include Sir Michael Barber, Ivan Berend, (Judge) William Birtles, Sir Rodric Braithwaite, Sir Bryan Cartledge, Anatoliy Sergeyevich Chernyaev, Patrick (Lord) Cormack, Sir James Craig, the late Ralf (Lord) Dahrendorf, Mark Fisher, Andrei Serafimovich Grachev, former Senator Gary Hart, Geoffrey (Lord) Howe, Derry (Lord) Irvine, the late Rita Klímová, Nigel (Lord) Lawson, Jack F. Matlock, Jr, Vadim Andreyevich Medvedev, the late Zdeněk Mlynář, Joyce (Baroness) Quin, Sir Malcolm Rif kind, MP, the late Georgiy Khosroevich Shakhnazarov, Gillian (Baroness) Shephard, Stuart (Lord) Wood and the late Aleksandr Nikolaevich Yakovlev.
If that is part of the background to the book, it is even more import ant to highlight the foreground. A work which ranges as widely as this volume incurs many debts to other authors. Those which derive from my reading are, I trust, fully acknowledged in the endnotes. But I have also had more direct help from fellow academics. For answering specific queries, I am particularly grateful to Professor Alan Barnard (Edinburgh University), Professor John Curtice (Strathclyde University), Professor Graeme Gill (University of Sydney), Professor Leslie Holmes (University of Melbourne), Dr Philip Robbins (St Antony’s College), Professor Arthur Stockwin (St Antony’s) and Dr Ann Waswo (St Antony’s). I appreciate even more the kindness of those friends and colleagues who read one or more chapters of this book in manuscript and offered invaluable comments and, in some cases, made necessary corrections. My particular thanks for doing so go to Alan Angell (St Antony’s), Professor William Beinart (St Antony’s), Professor Geoffrey Best (St Antony’s), Dr Nic Cheeseman (Jesus College, Oxford), Malcolm Deas (St Antony’s), Professor Rosemary Foot (St Antony’s), Peter Fotheringham (Glasgow University), Dr Sudhir Hazareesingh (Balliol College, Oxford), Professor Alan Knight (St Antony’s), Professor Rana Mitter (St Cross College, Oxford), Professor Kenneth (Lord) Morgan (Queen’s College, Oxford), Professor Tony Nicholls (St Antony’s), Dr Alex Pravda (St Antony’s), Dr Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s), Professor Avi Shlaim (St Antony’s), Professor Steve Smith (All Souls College, Oxford), Professor Alfred Stepan (Columbia University, New York), Professor Arne Westad (LSE) and Professor Stephen Whitefield (Pembroke College, Oxford). I am especially grateful to Al Stepan for many stimulating conversations as well as for his valuable comments on several chapters.
It is perhaps more than usually necessary to add that no one mentioned in these acknowledgements should be blamed for my views or assumed to be in agreement with what I have written. In a few cases I can be fairly sure that they disagree, since I am arguing against things they have written or said.
I have been extremely fortunate to have as my UK literary agent Felicity Bryan and the splendid team she leads (in exemplary style) at Felicity Bryan Associates in Oxford and I am no less lucky to have as my American agent George Lucas of Inkwell in New York. I have enjoyed a happy and collaborative relationship with my publishers, the Bodley Head in London and Basic Books in New York, and have appreciated very much the encouragement and support of, first, Will Sulkin and then Stuart Williams, publishers at the Bodley Head, and of Tim Bartlett at Basic Books. I am greatly indebted to Lara Heimert, publisher at Basic, who took a keen interest in the book from the outset and saw the US edition through to publication. I am very conscious also of how much indispensable work has been done by Katherine Ailes and Joe Pickering in London and by Michele Jacob and Leah Stecher in New York. Special thanks are due, above all, to Jörg Hensgen of the Bodley Head who did the detailed editing of this book and made many excellent suggestions. They included very good advice on points which could do with further elucidation and elaboration, and so he shares a modicum of blame for making what was not a short book somewhat longer. Finally, I am, as ever, hugely indebted to my wife Pat who has also read every word of the book in manuscript, been supportive in every way, and has put up with the long hours I have spent working on it. By the time anyone reads this in print, we’ll have had the long holiday I’ve been promising.